At this year’s event at the Japan Creative Centre, I asked each student to contribute one photo that represented some aspect of the module, along with a 400-word caption that explains the relevance of the photo to the module. The next 10 posts display this student work.

Student photos with caption line the hall of the Japan Creative Centre

Here is the first photo

“Sweet Revitalisation” by Francesca Chua

This is the pudding that sparked my curiosity in Tsuetate Onsen, located in Oguni Town, Kumamoto Prefecture. The “Tsuetate Pudding Legend Project” started a few years ago with 14 shops, restaurants, and ryokan (inns) working together to sell different flavours of pudding, all called “Tsuetate Pudding.” Tourists earn a stamp for each Tsuetate Pudding purchased, and when they collect ten stamps, they receive a souvenir from the Tsuetate Tourism Association Office.

This pudding idea is a creative reworking of a past local specialty, the amatamago (甘玉子), or “sweet egg.” Today’s pudding is made with the milk from local Jersey cows and cooked using the steam from Tsuetate Onsen. After hearing of this project, I and several classmates set out to investigate the origins and aims of this local revitalization effort.

Eventually, we found the originator of the idea and spoke with him, a young, seventh generation ryokan owner. From our short conversation, we could sense that he is not only passionate about cooking (he is a culinary master), but also constantly thinking about his guests and the future of Tsuetate. He acknowledges depopulation as a problem in the region, and so he wanted to come up with something that would attract tourists year round. He also hoped to create something that would keep shops open in Tsuetate Onsen, to give his guests something to do on the streets of town. As a chef, he came up with the idea of Tsuetate Pudding, made with local ingredients. Many shops, restaurants and ryokan then adopted his idea and joined the “Tsuetate Pudding Legend Project” with original pudding recipes of their own.

At the end of our conversation, not only did we satisfy our hunger for the truth behind the project’s origins, but we also satisfied our craving for the pudding, since he generously treated us to one pudding each! Even though this project may not be a huge movement, it is undoubtedly an effort by locals to revitalize the region in a small but meaningful way.